The present invention relates to communication network management. In particular, but not by way of limitation, the present invention relates to systems and methods for predicting one or more service problems in a communication network.
In the competitive telecommunications industry it is advantageous to identify communication network troubles quickly and get them resolved as soon as possible. This requires quick and reliable trouble detection and isolation to ensure network integrity and maintain both customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.
Previously known network error detection techniques, for example, have limited or no automation for detecting performance problems in advance of future failure. Typically, these techniques employ technicians to analyze service impacting conditions as they occur in a communication network. In large networks, where the number of service impacting conditions are high, the response time needed to review and analyze the service impacting conditions is constrained by the number of technicians available to review the conditions. It is not uncommon for many service impacting conditions to go unnoticed because of resource constraints and/or human error. As a consequence, service is impaired and failures result when they otherwise could be preemptively repaired.
Accordingly, previously known techniques for detecting errors in communication networks do not operate in a convenient, cost-effective manner and will most certainly not be satisfactory in the future. There is a need for real-time monitoring of the entire communication path from customer installation to customer installation that provides a proactive method for trouble detection and prediction in the communication network.